Getting Set Up

To use Amazon CloudWatch you need an AWS account. Your AWS account allows you to use services (for example,
Amazon EC2) to generate metrics that you can view in the CloudWatch console, a point-and-click
web-based interface. In addition, you can install and configure the AWS command line
interface (CLI).

Sign Up for Amazon Web Services (AWS)

When you create an AWS account, we automatically sign up your account for all AWS
services. You pay only for the services that you use.

If you have an AWS account already, skip to the next step. If you don't have an AWS
account, use the following procedure to create one.

Sign in to the Amazon CloudWatch Console

If necessary, use the navigation bar to change the region to the region where you have your AWS resources.

Even if this is the first time you are using the CloudWatch console, Your Metrics
could already report metrics, because you have used a AWS product that automatically pushes metrics
to Amazon CloudWatch for free. Other AWS products require that you enable metrics.

If you do not have any alarms, the Your Alarms section will
have a Create Alarm button.

Set Up the AWS CLI

You can use the AWS CLI or the Amazon CloudWatch CLI to perform CloudWatch commands.
Note that the AWS CLI replaces the CloudWatch CLI; we include new CloudWatch features only in the AWS CLI.